ARNOLD BENNETT 




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THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 



BY ARNOLD BENNETT 



NOVELS 

The Old Adam 

The Old Wives' Tale 

Helen with the High Hand 

The Matador of the Five Towns 

The Book of Carlotta 

Buried Alive 

The Grand Babylon Hotel 

A Great Man 

Leonora 

Whom God Hath Joined 

Hugo 

A Man from the North 

Anna of the Five Towns 

The Glimpse 

POCKET PHILOSOPHIES 

The Plain Man and His Wife 
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day 
The Human Machine 
Literary Taste 
Mental Effioency 

PLAYS 

The Great Adventure 
Cupid and Commonsense 
What the Public Wants 
Polite Farces 
Milestones 
The Honeymoon 

MISCELLANEOUS 
Paris Nights 

The Truth About an Author 
The Feast of St. Friend 



GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
NEW YORK 



THE PLAIN MAN 
AND HIS WIFE 

— ^'{^ 'I 

By ARNOLD BENNETT 

author of "the old adam," "the old wives* tale," 
"buried alivb," etc. 




NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






Cop3n:ight, 1913, 
By George H. Doran Con:^)any 



-f r*- 



c^P 



©CI.A857043 



CONTENTS 

Page 
I. All Means and No End 9 

II. The Taste for Pleasure 33 

III. The Risks of Life .60 

IV. In Her Place 87 



THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 



I 

ALL MEANS AND NO END 



THE plain man on a plain day wakes up, 
slowly or quickly according to his tem- 
perament, and greets the day in a 
mental posture which might be thus expressed 
in words: 
"Oh, Lord! Another day! What a grind!" 
If you ask me whom I mean by the plain man, 
my reply is that I mean almost every man. I 
mean you. I certainly mean me. I mean 
the rich and the poor, the successful and 
the unsuccessful, the idle and the diligent, the 
luxurious and the austere. For, what with the 
limits of digestion, the practical impossibility of 
wearing two neckties at once, the insecurity of in- 
vestments, the responsibilities of wealth and of 
success, the exhaustingness of the search 
for pleasure, and the cheapness of travel 
— the real differences between one sort of plain 
man and another are slight in these times. (And 
indeed they always were slight.) 

9 



10 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

The plain man has a lot to do before he may 
have his breakfast — and he must do it. The ty- 
rannic routine begins instantly he is out of bed. 
To lave limbs, to shave the jaw, to select clothes 
and assume them — these things are naught. He 
must exercise his muscles — all his muscles 
equally and scientifically — with the aid of a 
text-book and of diagrams on a large card ; which 
card he often hides if he is expecting visitors in 
his chamber, for he will not always confess to 
these exercises; he would have you believe that 
he alone, in a world of simpletons, is above the 
f addism of the hour ; he is as ashamed of these 
exercises as of a good resolution, and when his 
wife happens to burst in on them he will pretend 
to be doing some common act, such as walking 
across the room or examining a mole in the 
small of his back. And yet he will not abandon 
them. They have an empire over him. To drop 
them would be to be craven, inefficient. The 
text-book asserts that they will form one of 
the pleasantest parts of the day, and that he will 
learn to look forward to them. He soon learns 
to look forward to them, but not with glee. He 
is relieved and proud when they are over for 
the day. 



ALL MEANS AND NO END ii 

He would enjoy his breakfast, thanks to the 
strenuous imitation of diagrams, were it not that, 
in addition to being generally in a hurry, he is 
preoccupied. He is preoccupied by the sense of 
doom, by the sense that he has set out on the 
appointed path and dare not stray from it. The 
train or the tram-car or the automobile (same 
thing) is waiting for him, irrevocable, undeniable, 
inevitable. He wrenches himself away. He 
goes forth to his fate, as to the dentist. And 
just as he would enjoy his breakfast in the home, 
so he would enjoy his newspaper and cigarette 
in the vehicle, were it not for that ever-present 
sense of doom. The idea of business grips him. 
It matters not what the business is. Business is 
everything, and everything is business. He 
reaches his office — whatever his office is. He 
is in his office. He must plunge — he plunges. 
The day has genuinely begun now. The ap- 
pointed path stretches straight in front of him, 
for five, six, seven, eight hours. 

Oh! but he chose his vocation. He likes it. 
It satisfies his instincts. It is his life. (So you 
say.) Well, does he like it? Does it satisfy his 
instincts? Is it his life? If truly the answer is 
affirmative, he is at any rate not conscious of the 



12 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

fact. He is aware of no ecstasy. What is the 
use of being happy unless he knows he is happy? 
Some men know that they are happy in the hours 
of business, but they are few. The majority are 
not, and the bulk of the majority do not even 
pretend to be. The whole attitude of the average 
plain man to business implies that business is a 
nuisance, scarcely mitigated. With what secret 
satisfaction he anticipates that visit to the 
barber's in the middle of the morning! With 
what gusto he hails the arrival of an unexpected 
interrupting friend ! With what easement he de- 
cides that he may lawfully put off some task till 
the morrow! Let him hear a band or a fire- 
engine in the street, and he will go to the window 
with the eagerness of a child or of a girl-clerk. 
If he were working at golf the bands of all the 
regiments of HohenzoUern would not make him 
turn his head, nor the multitudinous blazing of 
fireproof skyscrapers. No! Let us be honest. 
Business constitutes the steepest, roughest league 
of the appointed path. Were it otherwise, busi- 
ness would not be universally regarded as a 
means to an end. 

Moreover, when the plain man gets home 
again, does his wife's face say to him : " I know 



ALL MEANS AND NO END 13 

that your real life is now over for the day, and 
I regret for your sake that you have to return 
here. I know that the powerful interest of 
your life is gone. But I ani glad that you have 
had five, six, seven, or eight hours of passionate 
pleasure"? Not a bit! His wife's face says to 
him : " I commiserate with you on all that you 
have been through. It is a great shame that you 
should be compelled to toil thus painfully. But 
I will try to make it up to you. I will soothe 
you. I will humour you. Forget anxiety and 
fatigue in my smiles." She does not fetch his 
comfortable slippers for him, partly because, in 
this century, wives do not do such things, and 
partly because comfortable slippers are no longer 
worn. But she does the equivalent — whatever 
the equivalent may happen to be in that particular 
household. And he expects the commiseration 
and the solace in her face. He would be very 
hurt did he not find it there. 

And even yet he is not relaxed. Even yet the 
appointed path stretches inexorably in front, and 
he cannot wander. For now he feels the cogs and 
cranks of the highly complex domestic machine. 
At breakfast he declined to hear them ; they were 
shut off from him ; he was too busy to be bothered 



14 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

with them. At evening he must be bothered with 
them. Was it not he who created the machine? 
He discovers, often to his astonishment, that his 
wife has an existence of her own, full of factors 
foreign to him, and he has to project himself, not 
only into his wife's existence, but into the ex- 
istences of other minor personages. His daugh- 
ter, for example, will persist in growing up. 
Not for a single day will she pause. He arrives 
one night and perceives that she is a woman and 
that he must treat her as a woman. He had not 
bargained for this. Peace, ease, relaxation in a 
home vibrating to the whir of such astounding 
phenomena? Impossible dream! These phe- 
nomena were originally meant by him to be the 
ornamentation of his career, but they are threat- 
ening to be the sole reason of his career. If his 
wife lives for him, it is certain that he lives 
just as much for his wife; and as for his daugh- 
ter, while she emphatically does not live for him, 
he is bound to admit that he has just got to live 
for her — and she knows it ! 

To gain money was exhausting; to spend it is 
precisely as exhausting. He cannot quit the ap- 
pointed path nor lift the doom. Dinner is 
finished ere he has begun to recover from the 



ALL MEANS AND NO END 15 

varied shock of home. Then his daughter may 
negligently throw him a few moments of charm- 
ing cajolery. He may gossip in simple idleness 
with his wife. He may gambol like any infant 
with the dog. A yawn. The shadow of the next 
day is upon him. He must not stay up too late, 
lest the vigour demanded by the next day should 
be impaired. Besides, he does not want to stay 
up. Naught is quite interesting enough to keep 
him up. And bed, too, is part of the appointed, 
unescapable path. To bed he goes, carrying ten 
million preoccupations. And of his state of mind 
the kindest that can be said is that he is 
philosophic enough to hope for the best. 

And after the night he wakes up, slowly or 
quickly according to his temperament, and greets 
the day with; 

"Oh, Lord! Another day! What a grind!" 



i6 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 



II 

The interesting point about the whole situa- 
tion is that the plain man seldom or never asks 
himself a really fundamental question about 
that appointed path of his — that path from 
which he dare not and could not wander. 

Once, perhaps in a parable, the plain man 
travelling met another traveller. And the plain 
man demanded of the traveller: 

" Where are you going to? " 

The traveller replied: 

" Now I come to think of it, I don't know." 

The plain man was ruffled by this insensate 
answer. He said: 

" But you are travelling? " 

The traveller replied : 

" Yes." 

The plain man, beginning to be annoyed, said: 

" Have you never asked yourself where you 
are going to?" 

" I have not" 



ALL MEANS AND NO END 17 

" But do you mean to tell me," protested the 
plain man, now irritated, " that you are putting 
yourself to all this trouble, peril, and expense of 
trains and steamers, without having asked your- 
self where you are going to ? " 

" It never occurred to me," the traveller ad- 
mitted. " I just had to start and I started." 

Whereupon the plain man was, as too often 
with us plain men, staggered and deeply affronted 
by the illogical absurdity of human nature. 
" Was it conceivable," he thought, " that this 
traveller, presumably in his senses — " etc. 
(You are familiar with the tone and the style, 
being a plain m.an yourself.) And he gave way 
to moral indignation. 

Now I must here, in parenthesis, firmly state 
that I happen to be a member of the Society for 
the Suppression of Moral Indignation. As such, 
I object to the plain man's moral indignation 
against the traveller; and I think that a liability 
to moral indignation is one of the plain man's 
most serious defects. As such, my endeavour 
is to avoid being staggered and deeply affronted, 
or even surprised, by human vagaries. There 
ar^ tpo many plain people who are always re- 



i8 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

discovering human nature — its turpitudes, 
fatuities, unreason. They live amid human na- 
ture as in a chamber of horrors. And yet, after 
all these years, we surely ought to have grown 
used to human nature ! It may be extremely vile 
— that is not the point. The point is that it 
constitutes our environment, from which we can- 
not escape alive. The man who is capable of be- 
ing deeply affronted by his inevitable environ- 
ment ought to have the pluck of his convictions 
and shoot himself. The Society would with 
pleasure pay his funeral expenses and contribute 
to the support of his wife and children. Such 
a man is, without knowing it, a dire enemy of 
true progress, which can only be planned and 
executed in an atmosphere from which heated 
moral superiority is absent. 

I offer these parenthetical remarks as a guaran- 
tee that I shall not over-righteously sneer at the 
plain man for his share in the sequel to the con- 
versation with the traveller. For there was a 
sequel to the conversation. 

" As questions are being asked, where are you 
going to ? " said the traveller. 

The plain man answered with assurance: 



ALL MEANS AND NO END 19 

" Oh, I know exactly where I'm going to. I'm 
going to Timbuctoo." 

" Indeed ! " said the traveller. " And why are 
you going to Timbuctoo ? " 

Said the plain man : " I'm going because it's 
the proper place to go to. Every self-respecting 
person goes to Timbuctoo." 

"But why?" 

Said the plain man: 

" Well, it's supposed to be just about unique. 
You're contented there. You get what you've 
always wanted. The climate's wonderful." 

" Indeed ! " said the traveller again. " Have 
you met anybody who's been there? " 

" Yes, I've met several. I've met a lot. And 
I've heard from people who are there." 

" And are their reports enthusiastic? " 

" Well — " The plain man hesitated. 

" Answer me. Are their reports enthusiastic? " 
the traveller insisted, rather bullyingly. 

" Not very," the plain man admitted. " Some 
say it's very disappointing. And some say it's 
much like other towns. Every one says the 
climate has grave drawbacks." 

The traveller demanded : 



20 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

" Then why are you going there? " 

Said the plain man: 

*' It never occurred to me to ask why. As I 
say, Timbuctoo's supposed to be — " 

"Supposed by whom?" 

" Well — generally supposed," said the plain 
man, limply. 

"Not by the people who've been there?" the 
traveller persevered, with obstinacy. 

'* Perhaps not," breathed the plain man. 
" But it's generally supposed — " He faltered. 

There was a silence, which was broken by the 
traveller, who inquired: 

"Any interesting places en route?" 

" I don't know. I never troubled about that,'* 
said the plain man. 

" But do you mean to tell me," the traveller 
exclaimed, " that you are putting yourself to all 
this trouble, peril, and expense of trains and 
steamers and camel-back without having asked 
yourself why, and without having satisfied your- 
self that the thing was worth while, and with- 
out having even ascertained the most agreeable 
route?" 

Said the plain man, weakly: 



ALL MEANS AND NO END 21 

" I just had to start for somewhere, so I 
started for Timbuctoo." 

Said the traveller : 

" Well, I'm of a forgiving disposition. 
Shake hands." 



22 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 



III 

The two individuals in the foregoing parable 
were worrying each other with fundamental ques- 
tions. And what makes the parable unrealistic is 
the improbability of real individuals ever doing 
any such thing. If the plain man, for instance, 
has almost ceased to deal in fundamental ques- 
tions in these days, the reason is not difficult to 
find. The reason lies in the modern perception 
that fundamental questions are getting very hard 
to answer. In a former time a dogmatic answer 
was ready waiting for every fundamental ques- 
tion. You asked the question, but before you 
asked it you knew the answer, and so there was 
no argument and nearly no anxiety. In that 
former time a mere child could glance at your 
conduct and tell you with certainty exactly what 
you would be doing and how you would be 
feeling ten thousand years hence, if you persisted 
in the said conduct. But knowledge has ad- 
vanced since then, and the inconvenience of 



ALL MEANS AND NO END 23 

increased knowledge is that it intensifies 
the sense o£ ignorance, with the result 
that, though we know immensely more than our 
grandfathers knew, we feel immensely more ig- 
norant than they ever felt. They were, indeed, 
too ignorant to be aware of ignorance — which is 
perhaps a comfortable state. Thus the plain man 
nowadays shirks fundamental questions. And as- 
suredly no member of the Society for the Sup- 
pression of Moral Indignation shall blame him. 

All fundamental questions resolve themselves 
finally into the following assertion and inquiry 
about life : " I am now engaged in something 
rather tiresome. What do I stand to gain by it 
later on ? " That is the basic query. It has 
forms of varying importance. In its supreme 
form the word " eternity " has to be employed. 
And the plain man is, to-day, so sensitive about 
this supreme form of the question that, far 
from asking and trying to answer it, he can 
scarcely bear to hear it even discussed — I mean 
discussed with candour. In practise a frank dis- 
cussion of it usually tempts him to exhibitions of 
extraordinary heat and bitterness, and wisdom 
is thereby but obscured. Therefore he prefers 
the disadvantage of leaving it alone to the dis- 



24 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

satisfaction of attempting to deal with it. The 
disadvantage of leaving it alone is obvious. Ex- 
istence is, and must be, a compromise between the 
claims of the moment and the claims of the 
future — and how can that compromise be wisely 
established if one has not somehow made up 
one's mind about the future? It cannot. But 
— I repeat — I would not blame the plain man. 
I would only just hint to him, while respecting 
his sensitiveness, that the present hour is just 
as much a part of eternity as another hour ten 
thousand years off. 

The second — the most important — form of 
the fundamental question embraces the problem 
of old age. All plain men will admit, when 
faithfully cross-examined, a sort of belief that 
they are on their way to some Timbuctoo situate 
in the region of old age. It may be the Tim- 
buctoo of a special ambition realized, or the Tim- 
buctoo of luxury, or the Timbuctoo of material 
security, or the Timbuctoo of hale health, or the 
Timbuctoo of knowledge, or the Timbuctoo of 
power, or even the Timbuctoo of a good con- 
science. It is anyhow a recognizable and defin- 
able Timbuctoo. And the path leading to it is 



ALL MEANS AND NO END 25 

a straight, wide thoroughfare, clearly visible for 
a long distance ahead. 

The theory of the mortal journey is simple 
and seldom challenged. It is a twofold theory 
— first that the delight of achievement will com- 
pensate for the rigours and self-denials of the 
route, and second that the misery of non- 
achievement would outweigh the immediate 
pleasures of dallying. If this theory were not 
indestructible, for reasons connected with the 
secret nature of humanity, it would probably 
have been destroyed long ago by the mere cumu- 
lative battering of experience. For the earth's 
surface is everywhere thickly dotted with old 
men who have achieved ambition, old men 
drenched in luxury, old men as safe as Mont 
Blanc from overthrow, old men with the health 
of camels, old men who know more than any- 
body ever knew before, old men whose nod can 
ruin a thousand miles of railroad, and old men 
with consciences of pure snow; but who are not 
happy and cannot enjoy life. 

The theory, however, does happen to be in- 
destructible, partly because old age is such a 
terrible long way off, partly because the young 



26 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

honestly believe themselves to have a monopoly 
of wisdom, partly because every plain man is 
convinced that his case will be different from 
all the other cases, and chiefly because endeavour 
— not any particular endeavour, but rather any 
endeavour ! — is a habit that corresponds to a 
very profound instinct in the plain man. So the 
reputation of Timbuctoo as a pleasure resort re- 
mains entirely unimpaired, and the pilgrimages 
continue with unabated earnestness. 

And there is another and a paramount reason 
why the pilgrimages should continue. The two 
men in the parable both said that they just had 
to start — and they were right. We have 
to start, and, once started, we have to keep go- 
ing. We must go somewhere. And at the mo- 
ment of starting we have neither the sagacity 
nor the leisure to invent fresh places to start for, 
or to cut new paths. Everybody is going to 
Timbuctoo ; the roads are well marked. And the 
plain man, with his honour of being peculiar, sets 
out for Timbuctoo also, following the signposts. 
The fear of not arriving keeps him on the trot, the 
fear of the unknown keeps him in the middle of 
the road and out of the forest on either side of 
it, and hope keeps up his courage. 



ALL MEANS AND NO END 27 

Will any member of the Society for the Sup- 
pression of Moral Indignation step forward and 
heatedly charge the plain man with culpable 
foolishness, ignorance, or gullibility; or even 
with cowardice in neglecting to find a convincing 
answer to the fundamental question about the 
other end of his life? 



28 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 



IV 

There is, however, a third form of the 
fundamental question which is less unanswer- 
able than the two forms already mentioned. 
The plain man may be excused for his re- 
markable indifference as to what his labour 
and his tedium will gain for him " later on,'* 
when " later on " means beyond the grave or 
thirty years hence. But we live also in the pres- 
ent, and if proper existence is a compromise be- 
tween the claims of the present and the claims of 
the future the present must be considered, and the 
plain man ought surely to ask himself the funda- 
mental question in such a form as the following : 
" I am now — this morning — engaged in some- 
thing rather tiresome. What do I stand to gain 
by it this evening, to-morrow, this week — next 
week? " In this form the fundamental question, 
once put, can be immediately answered by experi- 
ence and by experiment. 



ALL MEANS AND NO END 29 

But does the plain man put it? I mean — 
does he put it seriously and effectively? I think 
that very often, if not as a general rule, he does 
not. He may — in fact he does — gloomily and 
savagely mutter : " What pleasure do I get out 
of life?" But he fails to insist on a clear an- 
swer from himself, and even if he obtains a clear 
answer — even if he makes the candid admission, 
" No pleasure," or " Not enough pleasure " — 
even then he usually does not insist on modify- 
ing his life in accordance with the answer. He 
goes on ignoring all the interesting towns and 
oases on the way to his Timbuctoo. Excessively 
uncertain about future joy, and too breathlessly 
preoccupied to think about joy in the present, he 
just drives obstinately ahead, rather like a per- 
son in a trance. Singular conduct for a plain 
man priding himself on common sense! 

For the case of the plain man, conscientious 
and able, can only too frequently be summed up 
thus: Faced with the problem of existence, 
which is the problem of combining the largest 
possible amount of present satisfaction with 
the largest possible amount of security in 
the future, he has educated himself generally, 
and he has educated himself specially fpr a par- 



30 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

ticular profession or trade; he has adopted the 
profession or trade, with all its risks and re- 
sponsibilities — risks and responsibilities which 
often involve the felicity of others ; he has bound 
himself to it for life, almost irrevocably; he 
labours for it so many hours a day, and it oc- 
cupies his thoughts for so many hours more. 
Further, in the quest of satisfaction, he has taken 
a woman to wife and has had children. And 
here it is well to note frankly that his prime ob- 
ject in marrying was not the woman's happiness, 
but his own, and that the children came, not in 
order that they might be jolly little creatures, 
but as extensions of the father's individuality. 
The home, the environment gradually con- 
structed for these secondary beings, constitutes 
another complex organization, which he super- 
imposes on the complex organization of his pro- 
fession or trade, and his brain has to carry and 
vitalize the two of them. All his energies are 
absorbed, and they are absorbed so utterly that 
once a year he is obliged to take a holiday lest 
he should break down, and even the organization 
of the holiday is complex and exhausting. 

Now assuming — a tremendous assumption ! 
— that by all this he really is providing security 



ALL MEANS AND NO END 31 

for the future, what conscious direct, personal 
satisfaction in the present does the onerous pro- 
gramme actually yield? I admit that it yields 
the primitive satisfaction of keeping body and 
soul together. But a Hottentot in a kraal gets 
the same satisfaction at less expense. I admit 
also that it ought theoretically to yield the con- 
scious satisfaction which accompanies any 
sustained effort of the faculties. I deny that in 
fact it does yield this satisfaction, for the reason 
that the man is too busy ever to examine the 
treasures of his soul. And what else does it 
yield? For what other immediate end is the 
colossal travail being accomplished? 

Well, it may, and does, occur that the plain 
man is practising physical and intellectual cal- 
isthenics, and running a vast business and send- 
ing ships and men to the horizons of the earth, 
and keeping a home in a park, and oscillating 
like a rapid shuttle daily between office and 
home, and lying awake at nights, and losing 
his eyesight and his digestion, and staking his 
health, and risking misery for the beings whom 
he cherishes, and enriching insurance companies, 
and providing joy-rides for nice young women 
whom he has never seen — and all his present 



32 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

profit therefrom is a game of golf with a free 
mind once a fortnight, or half an hour's inti- 
macy with his wife and a free mind once a week 
or so, or a ten minutes' duel with that daugh- 
ter of his and a free mind on an occasional even- 
ing ! Nay, it may occur that after forty years of 
incessant labour, in answer to an inquiry as to 
where the genuine conscious fun comes in, he 
has the right only to answer : " Well, when I 
have time, I take the dog out for a walk. I en- 
joy larking with the dog." 

The estimable plain man, with his horror of 
self-examination, is apt to forget the immediate 
end of existence in the means. And so much so, 
that when the first distant end — that of a secure 
old age — approaches achievement, he is inca- 
pable of admitting it to be achieved, and goes on 
worrying and worrying about the means — from 
simple habit! And when he does admit the 
achievement of the desired end, and abandons 
the means, he has so badly prepared himself to 
relish the desired end that the mere change kills 
him ! His epitaph ought to read : " Here lies 
the plain man of common sense, whose life was all 
means and no end." 

A remedy will be worth finding. 



II 

THE TASTE FOR PLEASURE 

I 

ONE evening — it is bound to happen 
in the evening when it does happen 
— the plain man whose case I en- 
deavoured to analyse in the previous chapter will 
suddenly explode. The smouldering volcano 
within that placid and wise exterior will burst 
forth, and the surrounding country will be 
covered with the hot lava of his immense hidden 
grievance. The business day has perhaps been 
marked by an unusual succession of annoyances, 
exasperations, disappointments — but he has met 
them with fine philosophic calm; fatigue has 
overtaken him — but it has not overcome him; 
throughout the long ordeal at the office he has 
remained master of himself, a wondrous example 
to the young and the foolish. And then some 
entirely unimportant occurrence — say, an invi- 
tation to a golf foursome which his duties forbid 

33 



34 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

him to accept — a trifle, a nothing, comes along 
and brings about the explosion, in a fashion 
excessively disconcerting to the onlooker, and 
he exclaims, acidly, savagely, with a profound 
pessimism : 
" What pleasure do I get out of life? " 
And in that single abrupt question (to which 
there is only one answer) he lays bare the cen- 
tral flaw of his existence. 

The onlooker will probably be his wife, and 
the tone employed will probably imply that she 
is somehow mysteriously to blame for the fact 
that his earthly days are not one unbroken series 
of joyous diversions. He has no pose to keep 
up with his wife. And, moreover, if he really 
loves her he will find a certain curious satisfac- 
tion in hurting her now and then, in being wil- 
fully unjust to her, as he would never hurt or 
be unjust to a mere friend. (Herein is one of 
the mysterious differences between love and af- 
fection!) She is alarmed and secretly aghast, as 
well she may be. He also is secretly aghast. 
For he has confessed a fact which is an incon- 
venient fact ; and Anglo-Saxons have such a hor- 
ror of inconvenient facts that they prefer to ignore 
them even to themselves. To pretend that things 



THE TASTE FOR PLEASURE 35 

are not what they are is regarded by Anglo- 
Saxons as a proof of strength of mind and whole- 
someness of disposition; while to admit that 
things are indeed what they are is deemed to be 
either weakness or cynicism. The plain man is 
incapable of being a cynic; he feels, therefore, 
that he has been guilty of weakness, and this, of 
course, makes him very cross, 
t "Can't something be done?" says his wife, 
meaning, " Can't something be done to ameliorate 
your hard lot? " 

(Misguided creature ! It was the wrong phrase 
to use. And any phrase would have been the 
wrong phrase. She ought to have caressed him, 
for to a caress there is no answer.) 

" You know perfectly well that nothing can be 
done ! " he snaps her up, like a tiger snapping at 
the fawn. And his eyes, challenging hers, seem 
to say: "Can I neglect my business? Can I 
shirk my responsibilities? Where would you be 
if I shirked them? Where would the children 
be? What about old age, sickness, death, 
quarter-day, rates, taxes, and your new hat? I 
have to provide for the rainy day and for the 
future. I am succeeding, moderately; but let 
there be no mistake — success means that I must 



36 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

sacrifice present pleasure. Pleasure is all very 
well for you others, but I — " And then he will 
finish aloud, with the air of an offended and sar- 
castic martyr : " Something be done, indeed ! " 

She sighs. The domestic scene is over. 

Now, he may be honestly convinced that 
nothing can be done. Let us grant as much. 
But obviously it suits his pride to assume that 
nothing can be done. To admit the contrary 
would be to admit that he was leaving something 
undone, that he had organized his existence 
clumsily, even that he had made a fundamental 
miscalculation in the arrangement of his career. 
He has confessed to grave dissatisfaction. It be- 
hoves him, for the sake of his own dignity and 
reputation, to be quite sure that the grave dis- 
satisfaction is unavoidable, inevitable, and that 
the blame for it rests with the scheme of the 
universe, and not with his particular private 
scheme. His role is that of the brave, strong, 
patient victim of an alleged natural law, by rea- 
son of which the present must ever be sacrificed 
to the future, and he discovers a peculiar mis- 
erable delight in the role. " Miserable " is the 
right adjective. 



THE TASTE FOR PLEASURE 37 



II 

Nevertheless, in his quality of a wise plain man, 
he would never agree that any problem of human 
conduct, however hard and apparently hopeless, 
could not be solved by dint of sagacity and in- 
genuity — provided it was the problem of another 
person ! He is quite fearfully good at solving the 
problems of his friends. Indeed, his friends, rec- 
ognizing this, constantly go to him for advice. If 
a friend consulted him and said : 

" Look here, I'm engaged in an enterprise 
which will absorb all my energies for three years. 
It will enable me in the meantime to live and to 
keep my family, but I shall have scarcely a mo- 
ment's freedom of mind. I may have a little 
leisure, but of what use is leisure without free- 
dom of mind? As for pleasure, I shall simply 
forget what it is. My life will be one long 
struggle. The ultimate profit is extremely un- 
certain. It may be fairly good; on the other 
hand, it may be nothing at all." 



38 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

The plain man, being also blunt, would as- 
suredly interrupt: 

" My dear fellow, what a fool you've been ! " 
Yet this case is in essence the case of the wise 
plain man. The chief difference between the 
two cases is that the wise plain man has enslaved 
himself for about thirty years instead of three, 
with naught but a sheer gambling chance of final 
reward! Not being one of the rare individuals 
with whom business is a passion, but just an 
average plain man, he is labouring daily against 
the grain, stultifying daily one part of his nature, 
on the supposition that later he will be recom- 
pensed. In other words, he is preparing to live, 
so that at a distant date he may be in a condi- 
tion to live. He has not effected a compromise 
between the present and the future. His own 
complaint — " What pleasure do I get out of 
life?" — proves that he is completely sacrificing 
the present to the future. And how elusive is 
the future! Like the horizon, it always recedes. 
If, when he was thirty, some one had foretold that 
at forty-five, with a sympathetic wife and family 
and an increasing income, he would be as far off 
happiness as ever, he would have smiled at the 
prophecy. 



THE TASTE FOR PLEASURE 39 

The consulting friend, somewhat nettled by 
the plain man's bluntness, might retort : 

" I may or may not have been a fool. That's 
not the point. The point is that I am definitely 
in the enterprise, and can't get out of it. And 
there's nothing to be done." 

Whereupon the plain man, in an encouraging, 
enheartening, reasonable tone, would respond: 

" Don't say that, my dear chap. Of course, if 
you're in it, you're in it. But give me all the 
details. Let's examine the thing. And allow 
me to tell you that no case that looks bad is as 
bad as it looks." 

It is precisely in this spirit that the plain man 
should approach his own case. He should say 
to himself in that reasonable tone which he em- 
ploys to his friend, and which is so impressive: 
" Let me examine the thing." 

And now the plain man who is reading this and 
unwillingly fitting the cap will irately protest: 
" Do you suppose I haven't examined my own 
case? Do you suppose I don't understand it? 
I understand it thoroughly. Who should under- 
stand it if I don't? I beg to inform you that I 
know absolutely all about it." 

Still the strong probability is that he has not 



40 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

examined it. The strong probability is that he 
has just lain awake of a night and felt extremely 
sorry for himself, and at the same time rather 
proiid of his fortitude. Which process does not 
amount to an examination; it amounts merely to 
an indulgence. As for knowing absolutely all 
about it, he has not even noticed that the habit of 
feeling sorry for himself and proud of his forti- 
tude is slowly growing on him, and tending to 
become his sole form of joy — a morbid habit 
and a sickly joy! He is sublimely unaware of 
that increasing irritability which others discuss 
behind his back. He has no suspicion that he is 
balefully affecting the general atmosphere of his 
home. 

Above all, he does not know that he is losing 
the capacity for pleasure. Indeed, if it were sug- 
gested that such a change was going on in him he 
would be vexed and distressed. He would cry 
out : " Don't you make any mistake ! I could 
amuse myself as well as any man, if only I got 
the chance ! " And yet, how many tens of thou- 
sands of plain and (as it is called) successful men 
have been staggered to discover, when ambition 
was achieved and the daily yoke thrown off and 



THE TASTE FOR PLEASURE 41 

the direct search for immediate happiness com- 
menced, that the relish for pleasure had faded 
unnoticed away — proof enough that they had 
neither examined nor understood themselves! 
There is no more ingenuous soul, in affairs of 
supreme personal importance than your wise 
plain man, whom all his friends consult for his 
sagacity. 

Mind, I am not hereby accusing the plain man 
of total spiritual blindness — any more than I 
would accuse him of total physical blindness be- 
cause he cannot see how he looks to others when 
he walks into a room. For nobody can see all 
round himself, nor know absolutely all about his 
own case; and he who boasts that he can is no 
better than a fool, despite his wisdom; he is not 
even at the beginning of any really useful wis- 
dom. But I do accuse my plain man of deliber- 
ately shutting his eyes, from pride and from 
sloth. I do say that he might know a great deal 
more about his case than he actually does know, 
if only he would cease from pitying and praising 
himself in the middle of the night, and tackle the 
business of self-examination in a rational, vigor- 
ous, and honest fashion — not in the dark, but in 



42 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS Vn^IFE 

the sane sunlight. And I do further say that a 
self-examination thus properly conducted might 
have results which would stultify those out- 
rageous remarks of his to his wife. 



THE TASTE FOR PLEASURE 43 



III 

Few people — in fact, very few people indeed 

— ever realize the priceless value of the ancient 
counsel : " Know thyself." It seems so trite, so 
ordinary. It seems so easy to acquire, this 
knowledge. Does not every one possess it? 
Can it not be got by simply sitting down in a 
chair and yielding to a mood? And yet this 
knowledge is just about as difficult to acquire as 
a knowledge of Chinese. Certainly nine hundred 
and ninety-nine people out of a thousand reach 
the age of sixty before getting the rudiments of 
it. The majority of us die in almost complete 
ignorance of it. And none may be said to mas- 
ter it in all its exciting branches. Why, you can 
choose any of your friends — the wisest of them 

— and instantly tell him something glaringly 
obvious about his own character and actions — 
and be rewarded for your trouble by an indig- 
nantly sincere denial! You had noticed it; all 
his friends had noticed it. But he had not 
noticed it. Far from having noticed it, he is 



44 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

convinced that it exists only in your malicious 
imagination. For example, go to a friend whose 
sense of humour is notoriously imperfect, and 
say gently to him : " Your sense of humour is 
imperfect, my friend," and see how he will re- 
ceive the information! So much for the rarity 
of self-knowledge. 

Self-knowledge is difficult because it demands 
intellectual honesty. It demands that one shall 
not blink the facts, that one shall not hide one's 
head in the sand, and that one shall not be afraid 
of anything that one may happen to see in look- 
ing round. It is rare because it demands that 
one shall always be able to distinguish between 
the man one thinks one ought to be and the man 
one actually is. And it is rare because it de- 
mands impartial detachment and a certain 
quality of fine shamelessness — the shameless- 
ness which confesses openly to oneself and finds 
a legitimate pleasure in confessing. By way of 
compensation for its difficulty, the pursuit of self- 
knowledge happens to be one of the most en- 
trancing of all pursuits, as those who have se- 
riously practised it are well aware. Its interest 
is inexhaustible and grows steadily. Unhappily, 
the Anglo-Saxon racial temperament is inimical 



THE TASTE FOR PLEASURE 45 

to it. The Latins like it better. To feel its 
charm one should listen to a highly-cultivated 
Frenchman analysing himself for the benefit of 
an intimate companion. Still, even Anglo- 
Saxons may try it with advantage. 

The branch of self-knowledge which is par- 
ticularly required for the solution of the im- 
mediate case of the plain man now under con- 
sideration is not a very hard one. It does not 
involve the recognition of crimes or even of 
grave faults. It is simply the knowledge of 
what interests him and what bores him. 

Let him enter upon the first section of it with 
candour. Let him be himself. And let him be 
himself without shame. Let him ever remember 
that it is not a sin to be bored by what interests 
others, or to be interested in what bores others. 
Let him in this private inquiry give his natural 
instincts free play, for it is precisely the gradual 
suppression of his natural instincts which has 
brought him to his present pass. At first he will 
probably murmur in a fatigued voice that he 
cannot think of anything at all that interests him. 
Then let him dig down among his buried in- 
stincts. Let him recall his bright past of dreams, 
before he had become a victim imprisoned in the 



46 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

eternal groove. Everybody has, or has had, a 
secret desire, a hidden leaning. Let him dis- 
cover what his is, or was — gardening, philoso- 
phy, reading, travel, billiards, raising animals, 
training animals, killing animals, yachting, col- 
lecting pictures or postage-stamps or autographs 
or snuff-boxes or scalps, astronomy, kite-flying, 
house-furnishing, foreign languages, cards, swim- 
ming, diary-keeping, the stage, politics, car- 
pentry, riding or driving, music, staying up late, 
getting up early, tree-planting, tree-felling, town- 
planning, amateur soldiering, statics, entomol- 
ogy, botany, elocution, children-fancying, cigar- 
fancying, wife-fancying, placid domestic even- 
ings, conjuring, bacteriology, thought-reading, 
mechanics, geology, sketching, bell-ringing, 
theosophy, his own soul, even golf. . . . 

I mention a few of the ten million directions 
in which his secret desire may point or have 
pointed. I have probably not mentioned the 
right direction. But he can find it. He can per- 
haps find several right directions without too 
much trouble. 

And now he says: 

" I suppose you mean me to * take up ' one of 
these things ? " 



THE TASTE FOR PLEASURE 47 

I do, seeing that he has hitherto neglected so 
clear a duty. If he had attended to it earlier, and 
with perseverance he would not be in the hu- 
miliating situation of exclaiming bitterly that he 
has no pleasure in life. 

" But," he resists, " you know perfectly well 
that I have no time ! ** 

To which I am obliged to make reply: 

" My dear sir, it is not your wife you are talk- 
ing to. Kindly be honest with me." 

I admit that his business is very exhausting 
and exigent. For the sake of argument I will 
grant that he cannot safely give it an instant's 
less time than he is now giving it. But even so 
his business does not absorb at the outside more 
than seventy hours of the hundred and ten hours 
during which he is wide awake each week. The 
rest of the time he spends either in performing 
necessary acts in a tedious way or in performing 
acts which are not only tedious to him, but ut- 
terly unnecessary (for his own hypothesis is that 
he gets no pleasure out of life) — visiting, din- 
ner-giving, cards, newspaper-reading, placid 
domestic evenings, evenings out, bar-lounging, 
sitting aimlessly around, dandifying himself, 
week-ending, theatres, classical concerts, litera- 



48 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

ture, suburban train-travelling, staying up late, 
being in the swim, even golf. In whatever man- 
ner he is whittling away his leisure, it is the 
wrong manner, for the sole reason that it bores 
him. Moreover, all whittling of leisure is a mis- 
take. Leisure, like work, should be organized, 
and it should be organized in large pieces. 

The proper course clearly is to substitute acts 
which promise to be interesting for acts which 
have proved themselves to produce nothing but 
tedium, and to carry out the change with brains, 
in a business spirit. And the first essential is to 
recognize that something has definitely to go by 
the board. 

He protests: 

" But I do only the usual things — what every- 
body else does! And then it's time to go to 
bed." 

The case, however, is his case, not everybody 
else's case. Why should he submit to everlast- 
ing boredom for the mere sake of acting like 
everybody else? 

He continues in the same strain : 

" But you are asking me to change my whole 
life — at my age ! " 



THE TASTE FOR PLEASURE 49 

Nothing of the sort! I am only suggesting 
that he should begin to live. 
And then finally he cries : 
"It's too drastic. I haven't the pluck!" 
Now we are coming to the real point. 



50 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 



IV 

The machinery of his volition, in all 
directions save one, has been clogged, through 
persistent neglect, due to over-specialization. 
His mind needs to be cleared, and it can be 
cleared — it will clear itself — if regular periods 
of repose are enforced upon it. As things are, it 
practically never gets a holiday from business. I 
do not mean that the plain man is always think- 
ing about his business; but I mean that he is 
always liable to think about his business, that his 
business is always present in his mind, even 
if dormant there, and that at every oppor- 
tunity, if the mind happens to be inactive, 
it sits up querulously and insists on at- 
tention. The man's mind is indeed rather like an 
unfortunate domestic servant who, though not 
always at work, is never off duty, never night or 
day free from the menace of a damnable electric 
bell ; and it is as stale as that servant. His busi- 
ness is capable of ringing the bell when the man 
is eating his soup, when he is sitting alone with 



THE TASTE FOR PLEASURE 51 

his wife on a warm summer evening, and espe- 
cially when he wakes just before dawn to pity 
and praise himself. 

But he defends the position: 

" My business demands much reflection — con- 
stant watchfulness." 

Well, in the first place, an enterprise which de- 
mands watchfulness day and night from the same 
individual is badly organized, and should be re- 
organized. It runs contrary to the common 
sense of l^ature. And, in the second place, his 
defence is insincere. He does not submit to the 
eternal preoccupation because he thinks he ought, 
but simply because he cannot help it. How 
often, especially just before the dawn, has he not 
longed to be delivered from the perfectly futile 
preoccupation, so that he might go to sleep 
again — and failed to get free! How often, in 
the midst of some jolly gathering, has he not felt 
secretly desolate because the one tyrannic topic 
would run round and round in his mind, just like 
a clockwork mouse, accomplishing no useful end, 
and making impossible any genuine participation 
in the gaiety that environs him! 

Instead of being necessary to the success of 
his business, this morbid preoccupation is posi- 



52 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

lively detrimental to his business. He would 
think much more usefully, more powerfully, more 
creatively, about his business if during at least 
thirteen consecutive hours each day he never 
thought of it at all. 

And there is still a further point in this con- 
nection. Let him imagine how delightful it must 
be for the people in the home which he has made, 
the loving people whom he loves and to whom in 
theory he is devoting his career, to feel con- 
tinually that he only sees them obscurely through 
the haze emanating from his business! Why — 
worse ! — even when he is sitting with his wife, 
he and she might as well be communicating with 
each other across a grille against which a turn- 
key is standing and listening to every word said ! 
Let him imagine how flattering for her! She 
might be more flattered, at any rate more thrilled, 
if she knew that instead of thinking about his 
business he was thinking about another woman. 
Could he shut the front door every afternoon 
on his business, the effect would not only be 
beneficial upon it and upon him, but his 
wife would smile the warm smile of wisdom 
justified. Like most women, she has a firmer 
grasp of the essence of life than the man upon 



THE TASTE FOR PLEASURE 53 

whom she is dependent. She knows with her 
heart (what he only knows with his brain) that 
business, politics, and " all that sort of thing " 
are secondary to real existence, the mere pre- 
liminaries of it. She would rejoice, in the blush 
of the compliment he was paying her, that he 
had at last begun to comprehend the ultimate 
values ! 

So far as I am aware, there is no patent device 
for suddenly gaining that control of the mind 
which will enable one to free it from an obsession 
such as the obsession of the plain man. The 
desirable end can, however, be achieved by slow 
degrees, and by an obvious method which con- 
tains naught of the miraculous. If the victim of 
the obsession will deliberately try to think of 
something else, or to think of nothing at all — 
every time he catches himself in the act of think- 
ing about his business out of hours, he certainly 
will, sooner or later — probably in about a fort- 
night — cure the obsession, or at least get the 
upper hand of it. The treatment demands 
perseverance, but it emphatically does not de- 
mand an impossibly powerful effort. It is an 
affair of trifling pertinacious touches. 

It is a treatment easier to practise during day- 



54 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

light, in company, when distractions are plenti- 
ful, than in the solitude of the night. Trium- 
phantly to battle with an obsession at night, 
when the vitality is low and the egoism intensi- 
fied, is extremely difficult. But the small persist- 
ent successes of the day will gradually have their 
indirect influence on the night. A great deal can 
also be done by simple resolute suggestion. 
Few persons seem to know — what is, neverthe- 
less, a fact — that the most effective moment for 
making resolves is in the comatose calm which 
precedes going to sleep. The entire organism is 
then in a passive state, and more permanently 
receptive of the imprint of volition than at any 
other period of the twenty-four hours. If regu- 
larly at that moment the man says clearly and 
imperiously to himself, " I will not allow my 
business to preoccupy me at home; I will not 
allow my business to preoccupy me at home; I 
will not allow my business to preoccupy me at 
home," he will be astonished at the results; 
which results, by the way, are reached by sub- 
conscious and therefore unperceived channels 
whose workings we can only guess at. 

And when the obsession is beaten, destroyed, 
he will find himself not merely fortified with the 



THE TASTE FOR PLEASURE 55 

necessary pluck and initiative for importing a 
new interest into his existence. His instincts of 
their own accord will be asking for that interest, 
for they will have been set free. 



56 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 



In choosing a distraction — that is to say, in 
choosing a rival to his business — he should 
select some pursuit whose nature differs as much 
as possible from the nature of his business, and 
which will bring into activity another side of his 
character. If his business is monotonous, de- 
manding care and solicitude rather than irregular 
intense efforts of the brain, then let his distrac- 
tion be such as will make a powerful call upon 
his brain. But if, on the other hand, the course 
of his business runs in crises that string up the 
brain to its tightest strain, then let his distraction 
be a foolish and merry one. Many men fall into 
the error of assuming that their hobbies must be 
as dignified and serious as their vocations, though 
surely the example of the greatest philosophers 
ought to have taught them better! They seem 
to imagine that they should continually be im- 
proving themselves, in either body or mind. If 
they take up a sport, it is because the sport may 
improve their health. And if the hobby is in- 



THE TASTE FOR PLEASURE 57 

tellectual it must needs be employed to improve 
their brain. The fact is that their conception of 
self-improvement is too narrow. In their re- 
stricted sense of the phrase, they possibly don't 
need improving; they possibly are already im- 
proved to the point of being a nuisance to their 
fellow-creatures; possibly what they need is 
worsening. In the broad and full sense of the 
phrase self-improvement, a course of self -worsen- 
ing might improve them. I have known men — 
and everybody has known them — who would 
approach nearer to perfection if they could only 
acquire a little carelessness, a little absent-mind- 
edness, a little illogicalness, a little irrational and 
infantile gaiety, a little unscrupulousness in the 
matter of the time of day. These considerations 
should be weighed before certain hobbies are 
dismissed as being unworthy of a plain man's 
notice. 

Then comes the hour of decision, in which the 
wise plain man should exert all that force of will 
for which he is famous in his house. For this 
hour may be of supreme importance — may be 
the close of one epoch in his life and the begin- 
ning of another. The more volitional energy he 
can concentrate in it, the more likely is he to 



58 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

succeed in the fine enterprise of his own renais- 
sance. He must resolve with as much intensity 
of will as he once put into the resolution which 
sent him to propose marriage to his wife. And, 
indeed, he must be ready to treat his hobby some- 
what as though it were a woman desired — with 
splendid and uncalculating generosity. He must 
shower money on it, and, what is more, he must 
shower time on it. He must do the thing 
properly. A hobby is not a hobby until it is 
glorified, until some real sacrifice has been made 
for it. If he has chosen a hobby that is costly, 
both in money and in time, if it is a hobby diffi- 
cult for a busy and prudent man to follow, all 
the better. If it demands that his business shall 
suffer a little, and that his life-long habits of in- 
dustry shall seem to be jeopardized, again all the 
better. For, you know, despite his timid fears, 
his business will not suffer, and lifelong habits, 
even good ones, are not easily jeopardized. One 
of the most precious jewels of advice ever offered 
to the plain man was that he should acquire in- 
dustrious habits, and then try to lose them ! He 
will soon find that he cannot lose them, but the 
transient struggles against them will tend al- 
ways to restore the sane balance of his nature. 



THE TASTE FOR PLEASURE 59 

He must deliberately arrange pleasures for 
himself in connection with his hobby, and as 
often as possible. Once a week at least his pro- 
gramme should comprise some item of relaxation 
to which he can look forward with impatience be- 
cause he has planned it, and because he has com- 
pelled seemingly more urgent matters to give 
way to it ; and look forward to it he must, tasting 
it in advance, enjoying it twice over ! Thus may 
the appetite for pleasure, the ability really to 
savour it, be restored — and incidentally kept in 
good trim for full use when old age arrives and 
he enters the lotus-land. And with it all, when 
the hour of enjoyment comes, he must insist on 
his mind being free; expelling every preoccupa- 
tion, nonchalantly accepting risks like a youth, 
he must abandon himself to the hour. Let him 
practise lightheartedness as though it were char- 
ity. Indeed, it is charity — to his household, for 
instance. Ask his household. 

He says: 

" All this is very dangerous. My friends won't 
recognize me. I may go too far. I may become 
an idler and a spendthrift." 

Have no fear. 



Ill 

THE RISKS OF LIFE 
I 

BY one of those coincidences for which 
destiny is sometimes responsible, the 
two very opposite plain men whom I 
am going to write about were most happily 
named Mr. Alpha and Mr. Omega; for, owing to 
a difference of temperament, they stood far apart, 
at the extreme ends of the scale. 

In youth, of course, the differences between 
them was not fully apparent; such differences 
seldom are fully apparent in youth. It first made 
itself felt in a dramatic way, on the evening when 
Mr. Alpha wanted to go to the theatre and Mr. 
Omega didn't. At this period they were both 
young and both married, and the two couples 
shared a flat together. Also, they were both get- 
ting on very well in their careers, by which is 
meant that they both had spare cash to rattle in 
the pockets of their admirably-creased trousers. 

60 



THE RISKS OF LIFE 6i 

"Come to the theatre with us to-night, 
Omega? " said Mr. Alpha. 

** I don't think we will," said Mr. Omega. 

"But we particularly want you to," insisted 
Mr. Alpha. 

" Well, it can't be done," said Mr. Omega. 

"Got another engagement?'* 

" No." 

" Then why won't you come ? You don't mean 
to tell me you're hard up ? " 

" Yes, I do," said Mr. Omega. 

" Then you ought to be ashamed o£ yourself. 
What have you been doing with your money 
lately? " 

" I've taken out a biggish life assurance policy, 
and the premiums will be a strain. I paid the 
first yesterday. I'm bled white." 

" Holy Moses ! " exclaimed Mr. Alpha, shrug- 
ging his shoulders. 

The flat was shortly afterwards to let. The 
exclamation " Holy Moses ! " may be in itself 
quite harmless, and innocuous to friendship, if it 
is pronounced in the right, friendly tone. Un- 
fortunately Mr. Alpha used it with a sarcastic in- 
flection, implying that he regarded Mr. Omega 
as a prig, a fussy old person, a miser, a spoil- 



62 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

sport, and, indeed, something less than a man. 

" You can only live your life once," said Mr. 
Alpha. 

And they curved gradually apart. This was 
in 1893. 



THE RISKS OF LIFE 63 



II 

Nearly twenty years later — that is to say, not 
long since — I had a glimpse of Mr. Alpha at 
a Saturday lunch. Do not imagine that Mr. Al- 
pha's Saturday lunch took place in a miserable 
garret, amid every circumstance of failure and 
shame. Success in life has very little to do with 
prudence. It has a great deal to do with cour- 
age, initiative, and individual force, and also it 
is not unconnected with sheer luck. 

Mr. Alpha had succeeded in life, and the lunch 
at which I assisted took place in a remarkably 
spacious and comfortable house surrounded by 
gardens, greenhouses, garages, stables, and all 
the minions necessary to the upkeep thereof. 
Mr. Alpha was a jolly, a kind-hearted, an im- 
mensely clever, and a prolific man. I call him 
prolific because he had five children. There he 
was, with his wife and the five children ; and they 
were all enjoying the lunch and themselves to an 
extraordinary degree. It was a delight to be 
with them. 

It is necessarily a delight to be with people 



64 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

who are intelligent, sympathetic and lively, and 
who have ample money to satisfy their desires. 
Somehow you can hear the gold chinking, and 
the sound is good to the human ear. Even the 
youngest girl had money in her nice new purse, 
to do with it as she liked. For Mr. Alpha never 
stinted. He was generous by instinct, and he 
wanted everybody to be happy. In fact, he had 
turned out quite an unusual father. At the same 
time he fell short of being an absolute angel of 
acquiescence and compliance. For instance, his 
youngest child, a girl, broached the subject of 
music at that very lunch. She was fourteen, and 
had shown some of her father's cleverness at a 
school musical examination. She was rather up- 
lifted about her music. 

" Can't I take it up seriously, dad? " she said, 
with the extreme gravity of her years. 

" Of course," said he. " The better you play, 
the more we shall all be pleased. Don't you 
think we deserve some reward for all we've suf- 
fered under your piano-practising? '* 

She blushed. 

" But I mean seriously," she insisted. 

" Well, my pet," said he, " you don't reckon you 



THE RISKS OF LIFE 65 

could be a star pianist, do you? Fifteen hundred 
dollars a concert, and so on? " And, as she was 
sitting next to him, he affectionately pinched her 
delicious ear. 

" No," she admitted. " But I could teach. I 
should like to teach." 

" Teach ! " He repeated the word in a 
changed tone. " Teach ! What in Heaven's 
name should you want to teach for? I don't 
quite see a daughter of mine teaching." 

No more was said on the subject. 

The young woman and I are on rather confi- 
dential terms. 

" It is a shame, isn't it? " she said to me after- 
wards, with feeling. 

" Nothing to be done? " I inquired. 

** Nothing," said she. " I knew there wasn't 
before I started. The dad would never hear of 
me earning my own living." 

The two elder girls — twins — had no leaning 
towards music, and no leaning towards anything 
save family affection and social engagements. 
They had a grand time, and the grander the time 
they had the keener was the delight of Mr. Alpha 
in their paradisaical existence. Truly he was a 



66 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

pearl among fathers. The children themselves 
admitted it, and children can judge. The second 
son wished to be a painter. Many a father 
would have said, " I shall stand none of this non- 
sense about painting. The business is there, and 
into the business you'll go." But not Mr. Alpha. 
What Mr. Alpha said to his second son amounted 
to this : " I shall be charmed for a son of mine 
to be a painter. Go ahead. Don't worry. 
Don't hurry. I will give you an ample allow- 
ance to keep you afloat through the years of 
struggle. You shall not be like other beginners. 
You shall have nothing to think of but your pro- 
fession. You shall be in a position to wait. 
Instead of you running after the dealers, you 
shall comfortably bide your time until the dealers 
run after you." 

This young man of eighteen was precocious 
and extravagant. 

" I say, mater," he said, over the cheese, " can 
you lend me fifty dollars ? " 

Mr. Alpha broke in sharply: 

" What are you worrying your mother about 
money for? You know I won't have it. And 
I won't have you getting into debt either." 

" Well, dad, will you buy a picture from me? " 



THE RISKS OF LIFE 67 

" Do me a good sketch of your mother, and 
I'll give you fifty dollars for it." 

"Cash in advance?" 

" Yes — on your promise. But understand, no 
debts." 

The eldest son, fitly enougn, was in the busi- 
ness. Not, however, too much in the business. 
He put in time at the office regularly. He was 
going to be a partner, and the business would 
ultimately descend to him. But the business 
wrinkled not his brow. Mr. Alpha was quite 
ready to assume every responsibility and care. 
He had brains and energy enough, and some- 
thing considerable over. Enough over, indeed, 
to run the house and grounds. Mrs. Alpha 
could always sleep soundly at night secure in the 
thought that her husband would smooth away 
every difficulty for her. He could do all things 
so much more efficiently than she could, were 
it tackling a cook or a tradesman, or deciding 
about the pattern of flowers in a garden-bed. 

At the finish of the luncheon the painter, who 
had been meditative, suddenly raised his glass. 

" Ladies and gentlemen," he announced, with 
solemnity, " I beg to move that father be and 
hereby is a brick." 



68 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

" Carried nem. con.,'* said the eldest son. 

" Loud cheers ! " said the more pert of the 
twins. 

And Mr. Alpha was enchanted with his home 
and his home-life. 



THE RISKS OF LIFE 69 



III 

That luncheon was the latest and the 
most profound of a long series of im- 
pressions which had been influencing my mental 
attitude towards the excellent, the successful, 
the entirely agreeable Mr. Alpha. I walked home, 
a distance of some three miles, and then I 
walked another three miles or so on the worn 
carpet of my study, and at last the cup of my 
feelings began to run over, and I sat down and 
wrote a letter to my friend Alpha. The letter 
was thus couched: 

" My Dear Alpha, 

" I have long wanted to tell you something, 
and now I have decided to give vent to my de- 
sire. There are two ways of telling you. I 
might take the circuitous route by roundabout 
and gentle phrases, through hints and delicately 
undulating suggestions, and beneath the soft 
shadow of flattering cajoleries. Or I might dash 
straight ahead. The latter is the best, perhaps. 

" You are a scoundrel, my dear Alpha. I say 



70 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

it in the friendliest and most brutal manner. 
And you are not merely a scoundrel — you are 
the most dangerous sort of scoundrel — the smil- 
ing, benevolent scoundrel. 

" You know quite well that your house, with 
all that therein is, stands on the edge of a preci- 
pice, and that at any moment a landslip might 
topple it over into everlasting ruin. And yet 
you behave as though your house was planted in 
the midst of a vast and secure plain, sheltered 
from every imaginable havoc. I speak meta- 
phorically, of course. It is not a material preci- 
pice that your house stands on the edge of; it 
is a metaphorical precipice. But the perils sym- 
bolized by that precipice are real enough. 

" It is, for example, a real chauffeur whose 
real wrist may by a single false movement trans- 
form you from the incomparable Alpha into an 
item in the books of the registrar of deaths. It 
is a real microbe who may at this very instant be 
industriously planning your swift destruction. 
And it is another real microbe who may have al- 
ready made up his or her mind that you shall 
finish your days helpless and incapable on the 
flat of your back. 

" Suppose you to be dead — what would hap- 



THE RISKS OF LIFE 71 

pen? You would leave debts, for, although you 
are solvent, you are only solvent because you 
have the knack of always putting your hand 
on money, and death would automatically make 
you insolvent. You are one of those brave, jolly 
fellows who live up to their income. It is true 
that, in deference to fashion, you are now in- 
sured, but for a trifling and inadequate sum which 
would not yield the hundredth part of your pres- 
ent income. It is true that there is your busi- 
ness. But your business would be naught with- 
out you. You are your business. Remove your- 
self from it, and the residue is negligible. Your 
son, left alone with it, would wreck it in a year 
through simple ignorance and clumsiness ; for you 
have kept him in his inexperience like a maiden 
in her maidenhood. You say that you desired to 
spare him. Nothing of the kind. You were 
merely jealous, of your authority, and your in- 
dispensability. You desired fervently that all 
and everybody should depend on yourself. . . . 
" Conceive that three years have passed and 
that you are in fact dead. You are buried; you 
are lying away over there in the cold dark. The 
funeral is done. The friends are gone. But 
your family is just as alive as ever. Disaster has 



72 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

not killed it, nor even diminished its vitality. 
It wants just as much to eat and drink as it did 
before sorrow passed over it. Look through the 
sod. Do you see that child there playing with a 
razor? It is your eldest son at grips with your 
business. Do you see that other youngster striv- 
ing against a wolf with a lead pencil for weapon? 
It is your second son. Well, they are males, 
these two, and must manfully expect what they 
get. But do you see these four creatures with 
their hands cut off, thrust out into the infested 
desert? They are your wife and your daughters. 
You cut their hands off. You did it so kindly 
and persuasively. And that chiefly is why you 
are a scoundrel. . . . 

" You educated all these women in a false and 
abominable doctrine. You made them believe, 
and you forced them to act up to the belief, that 
money was a magic thing, and that they had a 
magic power over it. All they had to do was to 
press a certain button, or to employ a certain 
pretty tone, and money would flow forth like 
water from the rock of Moses. And so far as 
they were concerned money actually did behave 
in this convenient fashion. 

** But all the time you were deceiving them 



THE RISKS OF LIFE 73 

by a conjuring-trick, just as priests of strange 
cults deceive their votaries. . . . And further, 
you taught them that money had but one use — 
to be spent. You may — though by a fluke — 
have left a quantity of money to your widow, 
but her sole skill is to spend it. She has heard 
that there is such a thing as investing money. 
She tries to invest it. But, bless you, you never 
said a word to her about that, and the money 
vanishes now as magically as it once magically 
appeared in her lap. 

" Yes, you compelled all these four women 
to live so that money and luxury and servants 
and idleness were absolutely essential to them if 
their existence was to be tolerable. And what 
is worse, you compelled them to live so that, 
deprived of magic money, they were incapable of 
existing at all, tolerably or intolerably. Either 
they must expire in misery — after their splen- 
did career with you! — or they must earn exist- 
ence by smiles and acquiescences and caresses. 
(For you cut their hands off.) They must beg 
for their food and raiment. There are different 
ways of begging. 

" But you protest that you did it out of kind- 
ness, and because you wanted them to have a 



74 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

real good time. My good Alpha, it is absurd 
for a man to argue that he cut off a woman's 
hands out of kindness. Human beings are so 
incredulous, so apt to think evil, that such argu- 
ments somehow fail to carry conviction. I 
am fairly credulous myself, but even I de- 
cline to accept the plea. And I say that 
if your conduct was meant kindly, it is a pity 
that you weren't born cruel. Cruelty would 
have been better. Was it out of kindness that 
you refused to allow your youngest to acquire 
the skill to earn her own living? Was it out 
of kindness that you thwarted her instinct and 
filled her soul with regret that may be eternal? 
It was not. I have already indicated, in speak- 
ing of your son, one of the real reasons. An- 
other was that you took pride in having these 
purely ornamental and loving creatures about 
you, and you would not suffer them to have 
an interest stronger than their interest in you, 
or a function other than the function of com- 
pleting your career and illustrating your suc- 
cess in the world. If the girl was to play the 
piano, she was to play it in order to perfect 
your home and minister to your pleasure and 
your vanity, and for naught else. You got what 



THE RISKS OF LIFE 75 

you wanted, and you infamously shut your eyes 
to the risks. 

" I hear you expostulate that you didn't shut 
your eyes to the risks, and that there will al- 
ways be risks, and that it is impossible to pro- 
vide fully against all of them. 

" Which is true, or half true, and the truth 
or half-truth of the statement only renders your 
case the blacker, O Alpha! Risks are an inevi- 
table part of life. They are part of the fine savour 
and burden of life, and without the sense of 
them life is flat and tasteless. And yet you 
feigned to your women that risk was eliminated 
from the magic world in which you had put 
them. You deliberately deprived them of the 
most valuable factor in existence — genuine re- 
sponsibility. You made them ridiculous in the 
esteem of all persons with a just perception of 
values. You slowly bled them of their self- 
respect. Had you been less egotistic, they 
might have been happier, even during your life- 
time. Your wife would have been happier had 
she been permitted or compelled to feel the 
weight of the estate and to share understand- 
ingly the anxieties of your wonderful business. 
Your girls would have been happier had they 



76 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

been cast forcibly out of the magic world into 
the real world for a few hours every day during 
a few years in order to learn its geography, and 
its customs, and the terms on which food and 
raiment and respect can be obtained in it, and 
the ability to obtain them. And so would you 
have been happier, fool! You sent your girls 
on the grand tour, but you didn't send them into 
the real world. 

"Alpha, the man who cuts off another man's 
hands is a ruffian. The man who cuts off a 
woman's hands is a scoundrel. There is no ex- 
cuse for him — none whatever. And the kinder 
he is the worse he is. I repeat that you are the 
worst sort of scoundrel. Your family mourns 
you, and every member of it says what an angel 
of a father you were. But you were a scoundrel 
all the same. And at heart every member of the 
family knows it and admits it. Which is rather 
distressing. And there are thousands just like 
you, Alpha. Yes, even in England there are 
tens of thousands just like you. . . . 

" But you aren't dead yet. I was only ask- 
ing you to conceive that you were. 

" Believe me, my dear Alpha, 

" Yours affectionately." 



THE RISKS OF LIFE 77 

A long and violent epistle perhaps. You in- 
quire in what spirit Alpha received it. The 
truth is, he never did receive it. 



78 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 



IV 

You naturally assume that before the let- 
ter could reach him Alpha had been mor- 
tally struck down by apoplexy, double pneu- 
monia, bullet, automobile, or some such 
enemy of joy, and that all the dreadful 
things which I had foreseen might happen did in 
fact happen, thus proving once more what a 
very wise friend I was, and filling me with justi- 
fiable pride in my grief. But it was not so. 
Alpha was not struck down, nor did his agree- 
able house topple over the metaphorical preci- 
pice. According to poetical justice he ought to 
have been struck down, just to serve him right, 
and as a warning to others — only he was not. 
Not merely the wicked, but the improvident and 
the negligent, often flourish like the green bay 
tree, and they keep on flourishing, and setting 
wisdom and righteousness at defiance in the most 
successful manner. Which, indeed, makes the 
life of a philosopher and sagacious adviser ex- 
tremely difficult and ungrateful. 



THE RISKS OF LIFE 79 

Alpha never received my letter because I never 
sent it. There are letters which one writes, not to 
send, but to ease one's mind. This letter was 
one of them. It would not have been proper to 
dispatch such a letter. Moreover, in the duties 
of friendship, as distinguished from the pleasures 
of friendship, speech is better, bolder, surer than 
writing. When two friends within hailing dis- 
tance of each other get to exchanging epistles in 
order to settle a serious difference of opinion, 
the peril to their friendship is indeed grave; and 
the peril is intensified when one of them has 
adopted a superior moral attitude — as I had. 
The letters grow longer and longer, ruder and 
ruder, and the probability of the friendship sur- 
viving grows ever rapidly less and less. It is — 
usually, though not always — a mean act to write 
what you have not the pluck to say. 

So I just kept the letter as a specimen of 
what I could do — if I chose — in the high role 
of candid friend. 

I said to myself that I would take the first 
favourable occasion to hint to Mr. Alpha how 
profoundly, etc., etc. 

The occasion arrived sooner than I had feared. 
Alpha had an illness. It was not alarming, and 



8o THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

yet it was sufficiently formidable. It began with 
colitis, and ended with appendicitis and an opera- 
tion. Soon after Alpha had risen from his bed 
and was cheerfully but somewhat feebly about 
again I met him at a club. He was sitting in 
an arm-chair in one of the huge bay-windows 
of the club, and gazing with bright interest upon 
the varied spectacle of the street. The occasion 
was almost ideal. I took the other arm-chair in 
the semicircle of the window. I saw at once by 
his careless demeanour that his illness had taught 
him nothing, and I determined with all my no- 
torious tact and persuasiveness to point a moral 
for him. 

And just as I was clearing my throat to begin 
he exclaimed, with a jerk of the elbow and a 
benevolently satiric smile: 
"See that girl?" 

A plainly-dressed young woman carrying a 
violin-case crossed the street in front of our 
window. 

"I see her," said I. "What about her?" 
" That's Omega's second daughter." 
" Oh, Omega," I murmured. " Haven't seen 
him for ages. What's he doing with himself? 
Do you ever meet him nowadays?" 



THE RISKS OF LIFE 8i 

Said Mr. Alpha: 

" I happened to dine with him — it was chiefly 
on business — a couple of days before I fell ill. 
Remarkably strange cove, Omega — remarkably 
strange." 

"Why? How? And what's the matter with 
the cove's second daughter, anyway ? " 

" Well," said Alpha, " it's all of a piece — him 
and his second daughter and the rest of the 
family. Funny case. It ought to interest you. 
Omega's got a mania." 

"What mania?" 

" Not too easy to describe. Call it the pre- 
caution mania." 

"The precaution mania? What's that?" 

" I'll tell you." 

And he told me. 



82 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 



V 

"Odd thing," said Alpha, "that I should 
have been at Omega's just as I was sickening for 
appendicitis. He's great on appendicitis, is 
Omega." 

" Has he had it? " 

" Not he ! He's never had anything. But he 
informed me that before he went to Mexico last 
year he took the precaution of having his ap- 
pendix removed, lest he might have acute ap- 
pendicitis in some wild part of the country 
where there might be no doctor just handy for 
an operation. He's like that, you know. I be- 
lieve if he had his way there wouldn't be an ap- 
pendix left in the entire family. He's inoculated 
against everything. They're all inoculated 
against everything. And he keeps an elaborate 
medicine-chest in his house, together with elab- 
orate typewritten instructions which he forced 
his doctor to give him — in case anything awful 
should happen suddenly. Omega has only to 
read those instructions, and he could stitch a hor- 
rible wound, tie up a severed artery, or make an 



THE RISKS OF LIFE 83 

injection of morphia or salt water. He has a 
thermometer in every room and one in each bath. 
Also burglar-alarms at all doors and windows, 
and fire extinguishers on every floor. But that's 
nothing. You should hear about his insurance. 
Of course, he's insured his life and the lives of 
the whole family of them. He's insured against 
railway accidents and all other accidents, and 
against illness. The fidelity of all his clerks is 
insured. He's insured against burglary, natu- 
rally. Against fire, too. And against loss of rent 
through fire. His plate-glass is insured. His 
bunch of keys is insured. He's insured against 
employers' liability. He's insured against war. 
He's insured against loss of business profits. 
The interest on his mortgage securities is insured. 
His wretched little automobile is insured. 
I do believe he was once insured against the even- 
tuality of twins." 

" He must feel safe," I said. 

" Not the least bit in the world," replied Alpha. 
" Life is a perfect burden to him. That wouldn't 
matter so much if he didn't make it a perfect bur- 
den to all his family as well. They've all got 
to be prepared against the worst happening. If 
he fell down dead his wife would know just what 



84 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

to do. She knows all the details of his financial 
position exactly. She has to; he sees to that. 
He keeps her up to date in them every day. 
And she has to show him detailed accounts of the 
house as though it was a business undertaking, 
because he's so afraid of her being left helpless 
and incapable. She just has to understand that 
* life is real, life is earnest,' and death more so. 

" Then the children. They're all insured, of 
course. Each of the girls has to take charge of 
the house in turn. And they must all earn their 
own living — in case papa fell down dead. 
Take that second daughter. She hates music, 
but she has a certain mechanical facility with the 
fiddle, and so she must turn it into coin, in order 
to be on the safe side. Her instincts are for fine 
clothes, idleness, and responsibility. She'd take 
the risks cheerfully enough if he'd let her. But 
he won't. So she's miserable. I think they all 
are more or less." 

" But still," I put in, " to feel the burden of life 
is not a bad thing for people's characters." 

"Perhaps not," said Alpha. "But to be 
crushed under a cartload of bricks isn't likely to 
do one much good, is it? Why, Omega's a 
wealthy man, and d'you know, he must live on 



THE RISKS OF LIFE 85 

about a third of his income. The argument is, 
as usual, that he's liable to fall down dead — 
and insurance companies are only human — and 
anyhow, old age must be amply provided for. 
And then all his securities might fall simultane- 
ously. And lastly, as he says, you never know 
what may happen. Ugh ! " 

"Has anything happened up to now?" 

" Oh, yes. An appalling disaster. His draw- 
ing-room hearthrug caught fire six years ago and 
was utterly ruined. He got eleven dollars out 
of the insurance company for that, and was ec- 
statically delighted about it for three weeks. 
Nothing worse ever will happen to Omega. His 
business is one of the safest in the country. His 
constitution is that of a crocodile or a parrot. 
And he's as cute as they make 'em." 

"And I suppose you don't envy him?" 

" I don't," said Alpha. 

" Well," I ventured, " let me offer you a piece 
of advice. Never travel in the same train with 
Mr. Omega." 

" Never travel in the same train with him ? 
Why not?" 

" Because if there were a railway accident, and 
you were both killed on the spot, the world might 



86 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

draw comparisons between the effect on your 
family and the effect on his, and your family 
wouldn't like it." 

We remained silent for a space, and the silence 
was dramatic. Nervously, I looked out of the 
window. 

At length Alpha said : 

" I suppose there is such a thing as the happy 
medium." 

" Good-bye, Alpha." I rose abruptly. " Sorry, 
but IVe got to go at once." 

And I judiciously departed. 






IV 
IN HER PLACE 

I 

HE plain man is not always mature and 
■ successful, as I have hitherto regarded 
JL him. He may be unsuccessful in a 
worldly sense ; but from my present point of view 
I do not much care whether he is unsuccessful in 
that sense. I know that plain men are seldom fail- 
ures; their very plainness saves them from the 
alarming picturesqueness of the abject failure. 
On the other hand, I care greatly whether the 
plain man is mature or immature, old or young. 
I should prefer to catch him young. But he is 
difficult to catch young. The fact is that, just 
as he is seldom a failure, so he is seldom young. 
He becomes plain only with years. In youth, 
even in the thirties, he has fanciful capricious 
qualities which prevent him from being classed 
with the average sagacious plain man. He 
slowly loses these inconvenient qualities, and 

87 



88 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

develops into part of the backbone of the nation. 
And then it is too late to tell him that he is not 
perfect, simply because he has forgotten to cul- 
tivate the master quality of all qualities — 
namely, imagination. For imagination must be 
cultivated early, and it is just the quality that 
these admirable plain men lack. 

By imagination I mean the power to conceive 
oneself in a situation which one is not actually 
in; for instance, in another person's place. It 
is among the sardonic humours of destiny that 
imagination, while positively dangerous in an ill- 
balanced mind and of the highest value in a 
well-balanced mind, is to be found rather in the 
former than in the latter. And anyhow, the 
quality is rare in Anglo-Saxon races, which are 
indeed both afraid and ashamed of it. 

And yet could the plain, the well-balanced 
Anglo-Saxon male acquire it, what a grand 
world we should live in! The most important 
thing in the world would be transformed. The 
most important thing in the world is, ultimately, 
married life, and the chief practical use of the 
quality of imagination is to ameliorate married 
life. But who in England or America (or else- 
where) thinks of it in that connection? The 



IN HER PLACE 89 

plain man considers that imagination is all very 
well for poets and novelists. Blockhead! Yes, 
despite my high esteem for him, I will apply to 
him the Johnsonian term o£ abuse. Blockhead! 
Imagination is super-eminently for himself, and 
was beyond doubt invented by Providence in 
order that the plain man might chiefly exercise it 
in the plain, drudging dailiness of married life. 
The day cometh, if tardily, when he will do so. 



go THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 



II 

These reflections have surged up in my 
brain as I contemplate the recent case of 
my acquaintance, Mr. Omicron, and they are 
preliminary to a study of that interesting case. 
Scarce a week ago Omicron was sitting in the 
Omicron drawing-room alone with Mrs. Omi- 
cron. It was an average Omicron evening. 
Omicron is aged thirty-two. He is neither suc- 
cessful nor unsuccessful, and no human per- 
spicacity can say whether twenty years hence 
he will be successful or unsuccessful. But any- 
body can see that he is already on the way to be 
a plain, well-balanced man. Somewhat earlier 
than usual he is losing the fanciful capricious 
qualities and settling down into the stiff back- 
bone of the nation. 

Conversation was not abundant. 

Said Mrs. Omicron suddenly, with an ingrati- 
ating accent: 

" What about that ring that I was to have? ** 

There was a pause, in which every muscle of 
the man's body, and especially the facial muscles, 



IN HER PLACE 91 

and every secret fibre of his soul, perceptibly 
stiffened. And then Omicron answered, curtly, 
rebuttingly, reprovingly, snappishly, finishingly: 

" I don't know." 

And took up his newspaper, whose fragile 
crackling wall defended him from attack every 
bit as well as a screen of twelve-inch armour- 
plating. 

The subject was dropped. 

It had endured about ten seconds. But those 
ten seconds marked an epoch in Omicron's career 
as a husband — and he knew it not. He knew 
it not, but the whole of his conjugal future had 
hung evenly in the balance during those ten 
seconds, and then slid slightly but definitely — 
to the wrong side. 

Of course, there was more in the affair than 
appeared on the surface. At dinner the other- 
wise excellent leg of mutton had proved on cut- 
ting to be most noticeably underdone. Now, it 
is a monstrous shame that first-class mutton 
should be wasted through inefficient cookery; 
with third-class mutton the crime might have 
been deemed less awful. Moreover, four days 
previously another excellent dish had been ren- 
dered unfit for masculine consumption by pre- 



92 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

cisely the same inefficiency or gross negligence, 
or whatever one likes to call it. Nor was that 
all. The coffee had been thin, feeble, uninterest- 
ing. The feminine excuse for this last diabolic 
iniquity had been that the kitchen at the last mo- 
ment had discovered itself to be short of cof- 
fee. An entirely commonplace episode! Yes, 
but it is out of commonplace episodes that mar- 
tyrs are made, and Omicron had been made a 
martyr. He, if none else, was fully aware that 
evening that he was a martyr. And the woman 
had selected just that evening to raise the ques- 
tion of rings, gauds, futile ornamentations! He 
had said little. But he had stood for the uni- 
versal husband, and in Mrs. Omicron he saw the 
universal wife. 



IN HER PLACE 93 



III 

His reflections ran somewhat thus: 
" Surely a simple matter to keep enough 
coffee in the house! A schoolgirl could do 
it! And yet they let themselves run short of 
coffee! I ask for nothing out of the way. I 
make no inordinate demands on the household. 
But I do like good coffee. And I can't have it! 
Strange! As for that mutton — one would 
think there was no clock in the kitchen. One 
would think that nobody had ever cooked a leg 
of mutton before. How many legs of mutton 
have they cooked between them in their lives? 
Scores; hundreds; I dare say thousands. And 
yet it hasn't yet dawned on them that a leg of 
mutton of a certain weight requires a certain 
time for cooking, and that if it is put down late 
one of two things must occur — either it will be 
undercooked or the dinner will be late! Simple 
enough! Logical enough! Four women in the 
house (three servants and the wicked, negligent 
Mrs. Omicron), and yet they must needs waste 



94 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

a leg of mutton through nothing but gross care- 
lessness! It isn't as if it hadn't happened be- 
fore ! It isn't as if I hadn't pointed it out ! But 
women are amateurs. All women are alike. All 
housekeeping is amateurish. She (Mrs. Omi- 
cron, the criminal) has nothing in this world to 
do but run the house — and see how she runs it ! 
No order! No method! Has she ever studied 
housekeeping scientifically? Not she! Does she 
care? Not she! If she had any real sense of re- 
sponsibility, if she had the slightest glimmering 
of her own short-comings, she wouldn't have 
started on the ring question. But there you are! 
She only thinks of spending, and titivating her- 
self. I wish she had to do a little earning. She'd 
find out a thing or two then. She'd find out 
that life isn't all moonstones and motor-cars. 
Ring, indeed! It's the lack of tact that annoys 
me. I am an ill-used man. All husbands are ill- 
used men. The whole system wants altering. 
However, I must keep my end up. And I will 
keep my end up. Ring, indeed ! No tact ! '* 

He fostered a secret fury. And he enjoyed 
fostering it. There was exaggeration in these 
thoughts, which, he would admit next day, were 
possibly too sweeping in their scope. But he 



IN HER PLACE 95 

would maintain the essential truth of them. He 
was not really and effectively furious against 
Mrs. Omicron; he did not, as a fact, class her 
with forgers and drunken chauffeurs ; indeed, the 
fellow loved her in his fashion. But he did pass 
a mature judgment against her. He did wrap up 
his grudge in cotton-wool and put it in a drawer 
and examine it with perverse pleasure now and 
then. He did increase that secretion of poison 
which weakens the social health of nine hundred 
and ninety-nine in a thousand married lives — 
however delightful they may be. He did render 
more permanent a noxious habit of mind. He 
did appreciably and doubly and finally impair 
the conjugal happiness — for it must not be for- 
gotten that in creating a grievance for himself 
he also gave his wife a grievance. He did, in 
fine, contribute to the general mass of misunder- 
standing between sex and sex. 

If he is reading this, as he assuredly is, Mr. 
Omicron will up and exclaim: 

** My wife a grievance ! Absurd ! The facts 
are incontrovertible. What grievance can she 
have?" 

The grievance that Mr. Omicron, becoming 
every day more and more the plain man, is not 



96 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

exercising imagination in the very field where 
it is most needed. 

What is a home, Mr. Omicron? You reply 
that a home is a home. You have always had 
a home. You were born in one. With luck you 
will die in one. And you have never regarded a 
home as anything but a home. Your leading 
idea has ever been that a home is emphatically 
not an office nor a manufactory. But suppose 
you were to unscale your eyes — that is to say, 
use your imagination — try to see that a home, 
in addition to being a home, is an office and man- 
ufactory for the supply of light, warmth, cleanli- 
ness, ease, and food to a given number of people? 
Suppose you were to allow it to occur to you 
that a home emphatically is an organization simi- 
lar to an office and manufactory — and an ex- 
tremely complicated and delicate one, with many 
diverse departments, functioning under extremely 
difficult conditions? For thus it in truth is. 
Could you once accomplish this feat of imagi- 
native faculty, you would never again say, with 
that disdainful accent of yours : " Mrs. Omicron 
has nothing in the world to do but run the 
house." For really it would be just as clever for 



IN HER PLACE 97 

her to say : " Mr. Omicron has nothing in the 
world to do but rian the office." 

I admit heartily that Mrs. Omicron is not per- 
fect. She ought to be, of course; but she, alas! 
falls short of the ideal. Yet in some details she 
can and does show the way to that archangel, 
her husband. When her office and manufactory 
goes wrong, you, Mr. Omicron, are righteously 
indignant and superior. You majestically 
wonder that with four women in the house, etc., 
etc. But when you come home and complain 
that things are askew in your masculine estab- 
lishment, and that a period of economy must set 
in, does she say to you with scorn : " Don't 
dare to mention coffee to-night. I really wonder 
that with fourteen (or a hundred and forty) 
grown men in your establishment you cannot 
produce an ample and regular income?" No; 
she makes the best of it. She is sympathetic. 
And you, Mr. Omicron, would be excessively 
startled and wounded if she were not sympa- 
thetic. Put your imagination to work and you 
will see how interesting are these comparisons. 



98 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 



IV 

She is an amateur at her business, you say. 
Well, perhaps she is. But who brought her 
up to be an amateur? Are you not content 
to carry on the ancient tradition? As you medi- 
tate, and you often do meditate, upon that in- 
fant daughter of yours now sleeping in her cot, 
do you dream of giving her a scientific education 
in housekeeping, or do you dream of endowing 
her with the charms that music and foreign 
languages and physical grace can offer? Do you 
in your mind's eye see her cannily choosing beef 
at the butcher's, or shining for your pleasure in 
the drawing-room? 

And then Mrs. Omicron is, perhaps, not so 
much of an amateur as you assume. People 
learn by practice. Is there any reason in human 
nature why a complex machine such as a house 
may be worked with fewer breakdowns than an 
office or manufactory? Harness your imagina- 
tion once more and transfer to your house the 
multitudinous minor catastrophes that happen in 
your office. Be sincere, and admit that the ef- 



IN HER PLACE 99 

ficiency of the average office is naught but a 
pretty legend. A mistake or negligence or for- 
getfulness in an office is remedied and forgotten. 
Mrs. Omicron — my dear Mr. Omicron — never 
hears of it. Not so with Mrs. Omicron's office, as 
your aroused imagination will tell you. Mrs. 
Omicron's parlourmaid's duster fails to make 
contact with one small portion of the hall-table. 
Mr. Omicron walks in, and his godlike glance 
drops instantly on the dusty place, and Mr. Omi- 
cron ejaculates sardonically: "H'm! Four 
women in the house, and they can't even keep 
the hall-table respectable ! " 

Mr. Omicron forgets a letter at the bottom of 
his unanswered-letter basket, and a week later 
an excited cable arrives from overseas, and that 
cable demands another cable. No real harm has 
been done. Ten dollars spent on cables have 
cured the ill. Mrs. Omicron, preoccupied with 
a rash on the back of the neck of Miss Omicron 
before-mentioned, actually comes back from 
town without having ordered the mutton. In 
the afternoon she realizes her horrid sin and 
rushes to the telephone. The butcher reassures 
her. He swears the desired leg shall arrive. But 
do you see that boy dallying at the street corner 



100 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

with his mate? He carries the leg of mutton, 
and he carries also, though he knows it not nor 
cares, the reputation and happiness of Mrs. 
Omicron. He is late. As you yourself re- 
marked, Mr. Omicron, if a leg of mutton is put 
down late to roast, one of two things must occur 
— either it will be under-cooked or the dinner 
will be late. 

Now, if housekeeping was as simple as office- 
keeping, Mrs. Omicron would smile in tranquil- 
lity at the contretemps, and say to herself: 
" Never mind, I shall pay the late-posting fee — 
that will give me an extra forty minutes." You 
say that, Mr. Omicron, about your letters, when 
you happen to have taken three hours for lunch 
and your dictation of correspondence is thereby 
postponed. Only there is no late-posting fee in 
Mrs. Omicron's world. If Mrs. Omicron flung 
four cents at you when you came home, and in- 
formed you that dinner would be forty minutes 
late and that she was paying the fee, what, Mr. 
Omicron, would be your state of mind? 

And your imagination, now very alert, will 
carry you even farther than this, Mr. Omicron, 
and disclose to you still more fearful difficulties 
which Mrs. Omicron has to face in the manage- 



IN HER PLACE loi 

ment of her office or manufactory. Her staff is 
uneducated, less educated even than yours. And 
her staff is universally characterized by certain 
peculiarities of mentality. For example, her 
staff will never, never, never, come and say to 
her : " Please, ma'am, there is only enough cof- 
fee left for two days." No! Her staff will 
placidly wait forty-eight hours, and then come 
at 7 p. m and say : " Please, ma'am, there isn't 

enough coffee " And worse! You, Mr. 

Omicron, can say roundly to a clerk : " Look 
here, if this occurs again I shall fling you into 
the street." You are aware, and he is aware, 
that a hundred clerks are waiting to take his 
place. On the other hand, a hundred mistresses 
are waiting to take the place of Mrs. Omicron 
with regard to her cook. Mrs. Omicron has to 
do as best she can. She has to speak softly and 
to temper discipline, because the supply of do- 
mestic servants is unequal to the demand. And 
there is still worse. The worst of all, the su- 
preme disadvantage under which Mrs. Omicron 
suffers, is that most of her errors, lapses, crimes, 
directly affect a man in the stomach, and the man 
is a hungry man. 

Mr. Omicron, your imagination, now fever- 



102 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

ishly active, will thus demonstrate to you that 
your wife's earthly lot is not the velvet couch 
that you had unimaginatively assumed it to be, 
and that, indeed, you would not change places 
with her for a hundred thousand a year. Your 
attitude towards her human limitations will be 
modified, and the general mass of misunder- 
standing between sex and sex will tend to di- 
minish. 

(And if even yet your attitude is not modified, 
let your imagination dwell for a few instants on 
the extraordinary number of bad and expensive 
hotels with which you are acquainted — man- 
aged, not by amateurish women, but by profes- 
sional men. And on the obstinate mismanage- 
ment of the commissariat of your own club — of 
which you are continually complaining to mem- 
bers of the house-committee.) 



IN HER PLACE 103 



V 

I pass to another aspect o£ Mr. Omicron's 
private reflections consequent upon Mrs. Omi- 
cron's dreadful failure of tact in asking 
him about the ring after the mutton had proved 
to be underdone and the coffee to be in- 
adequate. " She only thinks of spending," re- 
flected Mr. Omicron, resentfully. A more or less 
true reflection, no doubt, but there would have 
been a different colour to it if Mr, Omicron had 
exercised the greatest of his faculties. Suppose 
you were to unscale your eyes, Mr. Omicron — 
that is to say, use your imagination — and try to 
see that so far as finance is concerned your wife's 
chief and proper occupation in life is to spend. 
Conceive what you would say if she announced 
one morning : " Henry, I am sick of spending. 
I am going out into the world to earn." Can 
you not hear yourself employing a classic phrase 
about "the woman's sphere"? In brief, there 
would occur an altercation and a shindy. 

Your imagination, once set in motion, will 



104 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

show you that your conjugal existence is divided 
into two great departments — the getting and the 
spending departments. Wordsworth chanted 
that in getting and spending we lay waste our 
powers. We could not lay waste our powers in 
a more satisfying manner. The two depart- 
ments, mutually indispensable, balance each 
other. You organized them. You made your- 
self the head of one and your wife the head of 
the other. You might, of course, have organ- 
ized them otherwise. It was open to you 
in the Hottentot style to decree that your 
wife should do the earning while you did 
the spending. But for some mysterious reason 
this arrangement did not appeal to you, and 
you accordingly go forth daily to the office 
and return therefrom with money. The theory 
of your daily excursion is firmly based in the 
inherent nature of things. The theory is the 
fundamental cosmic one that money is made in 
order that money may be spent — either at once 
or later. Even the miser conforms to this theory, 
for he only saves in obedience to the argument 
that the need of spending in the future may be 
more imperious than is the need of spending at 
the moment. 



IN HER PLACE 105 

The whole of your own personal activity is a 
mere preliminary to the activity of Mrs. Omi- 
cron. Without hers, yours would be absurd, ri- 
diculous, futile, supremely silly. By spending 
she completes and justifies your labour; she 
crowns your life by spending. You married her 
so that she might spend. You wanted some one 
to spend, and it was understood that she should 
fill the situation. She was brought up to spend, 
and you knew that she was brought up to spend. 
Spending is her vocation. And yet you turn 
round on her and complain, " She only thinks of 
spending." 

" Yes," you say, " but there is such a thing as 
moderation." There is; I admit it. The word 
" extravagance " is no idle word in the English 
language. It describes a quality which exists. 
Let it be an axiom that Mrs. Omicron is human. 
Just as the tendency to get may grow on you, 
until you become a rapacious and stingy money- 
grubber, so the tendency to spend may grow on 
her. One has known instances. A check-action 
must be occasionally employed. Agreed! But, 
Mr. Omicron, you should choose a time and a 
tone for employing it other than you chose on 
this evening that I have described. A man who 



io6 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

mixes up jewelled rings with undertone mutton 
and feeble coffee is a clumsy man. 

Exercise your imagination to put yourself in 
the place of Mrs. Omicron, and you will perceive 
that she is constantly in the highly delicate diffi- 
culty of having to ask for money, or at any rate 
of having to suggest or insinuate that money 
should be given to her. It is her right and even 
her duty to ask for money, but the foolish, illogi- 
cal creature — like most women, even those with 
generous and polite husbands — regards the pro- 
cess as a little humiliating for herself. You, Mr. 
Omicron, have perhaps never asked for money. 
But your imagination will probably be able to 
make you feel how it feels to ask for money. A 
woman whose business in life it is to spend 
money which she does not and cannot earn may 
sometimes have to face a refusal when she asks 
for money. But there is one thing from which 
she ought to be absolutely and eternally safe — 
and that is a snub. 



IN HER PLACE 107 



VI 

And finally, in his reflections as an ill-used man 
tied for life to a woman who knows not tact, Mr. 
Omicron asserted further that Mrs. Omicron only 
thought of spending and titivating herself. To 
assert that she only thought of spending did not 
satisfy his spleen ; he must add " titivating her- 
self." He would admit, of course, that she did 
as a fact sometimes think of other matters, but 
still he would uphold the gravamen of his charge. 
And yet — excellent Omicron ! — you have but to 
look the truth in the face — as a plain common- 
sense man will — and to use your imagination, in 
order to perceive that there really is no grava- 
men in the charge. 

Why did you insist on marrying Mrs. Omi- 
cron? She had the reputation of being a good 
housekeeper (as girls go) ; she was a serious girl, 
kind-hearted, of irreproachable family, having 
agreeable financial expectations, clever, well-edu- 
cated, good-tempered, pretty. But the truth is 
that you married her for none of these attributes. 



io8 THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

You married her because you were attracted to 
her; and what attracted you was a mysterious, 
never-to-be-defined quality about her — an efflu- 
ence, an emanation, a lurking radiance, an en- 
tirely enigmatic charm. In the end " charm " is 
the one word that even roughly indicates that ele- 
ment in her personality which caused you to lose 
your head about her. A similar phenomenon is 
to be observed in all marriages of inclination. A 
similar phenomenon is at the bottom of most 
social movements. Why, the Men's League for 
Women's Suffrage itself certainly came into be- 
ing through the strange workings of that same 
phenomenon! You married Mrs. Omicron 
doubtless because she was " suitable," but her 
" suitability," for you, consisted in the way she 
breathed, the way she crossed a room, a transient 
gesture, a vibration in her voice, a blush, a glance, 
the curve of an arm — nothing, nothing — and 
yet everything ! 

You may condescend towards this quality of 
hers, Mr. Omicron — you may try to dismiss it 
as "feminine charm," and have done with it. 
But you cannot have done with it. And 
the fact will ever remain that you are inca- 
pable of supplying it yourself, with all your tal- 



IN HER PLACE 109 

ents and your divine common sense. You are an 
extremely wise and good man, but you cannot 
ravish the senses of a roomful of people by merely 
walking downstairs, by merely throwing a shawl 
over your shoulders, by a curious depression in 
the corner of one cheek. This gift of grace is not 
yours. Wise as you are, you will be still wiser 
if you do not treat it disdainfully. It is among 
the supreme things in the world. It has made a 
mighty lot of history, and not improbably will 
make some more — even yours. 

You were not the only person aware of the 
formidable power (for formidable it was) which 
she possessed over you. She, too, was aware of 
it, and is still. She knows that when she exists 
in a particular way, she will produce in your ex- 
istence a sensation which, though fleeting, you 
prefer to all other sensations — a sensation 
unique. And this quality by which she disturbs 
and enchants you is her main resource in the ad- 
venture of life. Shall she not cherish this qual- 
ity, adorn it, intensify it? On the contrary, you 
well know that you would be very upset and 
amazed if Mrs. Omicron were to show signs of 
neglecting this quality of hers which yearns for 
rings. And, if you have ever entered a necktie- 



no THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE 

shop and been dazzled by the spectacle of a fine 
necktie into " hanging expense " — if you have 
been through this wondrous experience, your 
imagination, duly prodded, will enable you to put 
yourself into Mrs. Omicron's place when she 
mentions the subject of rings. " Titivating her- 
self? " Good heavens, she is helping the very 
earth to revolve! And you smote the defence- 
less creature with a lethal word — because the 
butcher's boy dallied at a street-corner! 

You insinuate that one frail hand may carry 
too many rings. You reproduce your favourite 
word " moderation." Mr. Omicron, I take you. 
I agree as to the danger. But if Mrs. Omicron is 
human, let us also bear in mind the profound 
truth that not one of us is more human than an- 
other. 



THE END 



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